Ngabes for Newbies

Disclaimer: this post is in no way is a 100% accurate historical and culture representation of Ngabe peoples. The information gathered here is a mixture of my own observations, what people of my community tell me, and information I have gathered from literature.

Since I am living in the province of Ngabe Bugle, I wanted to give more insight to what exactly that means. There are two populations in Panama: Latino and indigenous. One of the remarkable things about this tiny isthmus of land joining together North and South America, is that there are SEVEN indigenous groups of people who were here before the Europeans arrived. In most countries of Middle America the arrival of Europeans produced tragic consequences. Arriving explorers and exploiters brought with them fire arms, previously unknown animals like horses and attack dogs, and diseases to which the indigenous had no immunity. Additionally many of the Spanish conquistadors enslaved indigenous people to use as workers. Despite the brutal history, it is truly remarkable that Panama still has seven living indigenous cultures that were here before European explorers arrived. The remaining groups are

1.      Kunas

2.      Ngabe

3.      Bugle

4.      Embera

5.      Wounan

6.      Teribes

7.      Bokotas

Starting in 1972, the Panamanian government was required to establish comarcas, demarcated regions in which indigenous groups possess exclusive land rights and considerable administrative autonomy. There are five comarcas for the remaining seven groups. Within comarcas, people elect a General assembly, governor, and any number of regional and local leaders, although the federal government still controls public expenditure and tax revenues within the territory. The comarca Ngäbe-Buglé, (comprised of 2 different indigenous groups, Ngabe and Bugle) located in north western Panama, was formed in 1997 both as a latent result of government promise and of considerable political pressure from the Ngäbe-Buglé, united by threats of natural resource exploitation and environmental degradation on their ancestral lands. The territory is made up of land previously belonging to the provinces of Bocas del Toro, Chiriquí, and Veraguas, and divided into seven districts. The Ngabe are by far the largest indigenous group with somewhere between 200,000-280,000. However, census numbers for indigenous are notoriously inaccurate. As the Ngäbe-Buglé population tends to identify more with their communities than with an ethnicity and is distributed rather unevenly, the political organization that prompted the formation of their comarca is fairly unusual, but nonetheless demonstrates a powerful capacity to influence government actions.

Indigenous people are generally regarded as “second class” within Panamanian society. As subsistence agriculture becomes less and less reliable, Ngabes have started to participate in the cash economy, which provides some relatively accessible alternatives for generating capital and obtaining necessary amenities and resources. Labor is one abundant resource the Ngabes possess, although due to poor education and low human capital including health and nutrition, the labor force is rather unskilled. As a result, many men serve as migrant agricultural workers or leave the comarca to seek other types of informal jobs. Many men work during the coffee harvest in the Chiriqui Highlands. This region of Panama is known for high quality shade grown and in some cases organic coffee. The Ngabes also harvest seasonal vegetables grown at higher altitudes. Women also participate in the informal economy by making chacaras, naguas and jewelry to sell, and some men sew pants or weave hats to do the same.

Wearing a traditional nagua and holding two chacaras

In the area that I live in, selling cocoa is also a main source of income. But in other parts of the comarca, rice is the cash crop.

Also in my area, banana is the staple food. Banana plantations have been large since the 70s in Bocas del Torro and the west end of the comarca. The market continued to boom when Chiquita Banana came in the 90s. When the Europeans came the Ngabe people were pushed into the current Bocas area and were forced to adapt to a different climate and food source. Later when the banana plantations were booming, so many ngobes worked for the plantations. When the comarcas were developed in 1997, the territory was reserved for the people and the Chiquita moved out. But many people had learned banana farming which is why eating boiled bananas is so common. But people do not wait until bananas are ripe. Because of the poverty level and lack of food, people cannot wait until bananas are ripe so are eaten green by boiling them or frying them

The Ngäbe-Buglé experience much adversity as a result of contemporary conditions. As localized problems of land and crop shortage grow into a more generalized issue, and it becomes more difficult to generate capital in a shrinking labor market, malnutrition is prevalent, especially in children and expecting mothers. Attempts to generate capital by becoming a migrant worker also have negative social effects including added strains on family structure and increased pressure on women to provide for their children alone. The dispersed nature of the population also makes existing medical care hard to access, and a general lack of potable water and sanitation services cause a myriad of health problems. Lack of sufficient infrastructure and under provision of social services by the government is often the root of many problems that plague the most rural areas.

Prevalence of poor Spanish skills is also an issue as Ngabe people are often unaware of legal rights and hence either fail to communicate complaints or to use the paths of legal recourse available to them when it would be beneficial to do so. This condition especially affects women because far fewer of them speak Spanish than men. Levels of secondary education are also low in the comarca Ngäbe-Buglé as children are financially limited and transportation to secondary schooling presents a great challenge for many families. As a result, only ~18% of children ages 15–19 in the comarca Ngäbe-Buglé have schooling beyond the sixth grade.

The experience and role of a volunteer in an indigenous site is extremely different than in a Latino site. Venturing into one after being in the other is still a culture shock for me as I almost have to be 2 different people.  Each has its own challenges and strategies and there is a lot to keep in mind as I criss-cross into the two worlds. 

8 glasses of water a day

Disclaimer: chicken killing pictures towards the end of this post. Warning to all my veg-head friends or and the squeamish.

I am feeling more and more integrated in Santa Marta. The first few weeks I felt like a broken record, but now I am feeling human again. I am invited to the farms frequently, I know almost every adults name (there are too many kids) and spend the afternoons discussing politics, culture, love, and life. This is a great break from the constant Peace Corps explanation I was doing. I can be myself and joke around without having the guilt to talk about work; meanwhile I am building great relationships here in my community and everyday feel a little more at home.

 

At the end of May we had a regional meeting. Every volunteer in the province plus the office staff gather for announcements and updates. These meetings happen every 4 months and is a nice time to check in with other volunteers. This was my first regional meeting, so I was able to meet other volunteers who have already been here for a year plus. Since we live in one of coolest provinces in Panama, we have our after party on Bocas Island! To get to Isla Colon (the biggest and most popular island) is about an hour boat ride from the mainland. Upon arrival, I was shocked to hear everyone speaking English and see taco trucks, ice cream, and beer. Upon arrival tourists are greeted with a downtown strip with restaurants and shops on the water. However if you want to go to the beach you need to travel to the other side of the island, which is a 30 minute windy-road bus ride. Nonetheless the beach was absolutely beautiful and the water was crystal clear. It was a great getaway from jungle life.

 

I have received many questions about my water filter so I want to update readers. I have received my filter and have been sick-free ever since. Thankfully the medical office sent it to my nearest post office.

 

Speaking of water, in an earlier post I explained the water situation in Santa Marta and its faulty aqueduct. Which, I have now learned isn’t even an aqueduct. It is called a “toma”. In short, it is a tube that is stuck in the side of a hill that collects the water from the watershed inside the hill. Then there are a line of tubes that travel all the way to the community.  This is different from an aqueduct because an aqueduct includes a tank to store water and also includes a filtration system.

Example of a toma

 

 At the regional meeting I met other volunteers who offered to help me out with this problem. There is a married couple that live not too far from me and work in the sector Environmental Health.  They have training specific with aqueducts (not to mention the husband is an engineer). They offered to come and check out the toma and give me ideas on what I can do to help the community.

Before they came, I had been helping a few community members look for other watersheds. One day we hiked up into the jungle for 3 hours! They think that the reason why the water goes out is because the current toma is drying up. They want to look for a new place to start a new aqueduct. This in itself poses many problems. First, Panama uses a lot of aqueducts and wells to capture rain and water from the ground. Go Panama! They take advantage of the abundant water from being in the tropics. BUT the government doesn’t have a water district for every city like there is in the states. MINSA (ministerio de salud de la Republica de Panama) is the national health and water agency. But from what I have seen, a community needs to present a proposal before MINSA in hopes to get funding to build an aqueduct. If the proposal is approved, an engineer will come to the community and look for potential watersheds to capture water and then MINSA will fund the project. But for a community to bring a proposal to MINSA, it is best to be written by the water community, which depending on the community, may or may not be organized enough to have a committee. Also, many engineers from MINSA that come to look for water sources come during the rainy season. The catch is that during the summer these sources dry up, which is what happened in Santa Marta. The engineer looked for a place during the rainy season and thought it was permanent. After it dried up in the summer the community worked with the existing tubes to makeshift their own toma sans the help of MINSA. Santa Marta also had a water committee but there was an incident in the past and the president left with all the funds they had collected from the community. Another problem is that MINSA offices are not abundant, maybe one per province and the closest MINSA office for my province is about a 2 hour bus ride. Even if my community had a water committee, the poverty level is high enough that it would be difficult for members to pay for a bus there and back.

And now that I have arrived, there are high expectations that I or Peace Corps will be paying for the materials for a new aqueduct. Unfortunately, Peace Corps does not give funding for projects and if volunteers need money for projects, options are (in order from most desirable to least): work with national agencies and government officials, ask friends and family, pay for it yourself.

 After the couple visited me, they gave me great advice on what I needed to do to help the community form a committee. They gave me resources that includes workshops and seminars that can help the committee organize itself. It includes: communication strengthening, budgeting, enforcement of rules, writing a contract, writing a formal letter, and MINSA committee laws.

In regards to the actual toma, my engineer friend said he was impressed with the makeshift toma my community had made and doesn’t recommend looking for another source of water. The water source is large enough and he recommends using a few more tubes to stick into the hillside. Then connect these tubes to the principal tube that travels to the community. The idea is to collect more water from various tubes and various places in the ground and connect them all with a bigger principal tube to allow more water to travel to the community. I enjoy this better then looking in the jungle for other water sources. However the decision would have to be made by the water committee.

 

I also had my first meeting with the community. I explained what Peace Corps was and what my sector works in. While i have been explaining this to people as I have been meeting them, I really wanted to reinforce it. I have also been warned by other volunteers that throughout time people forget. After my explanation I did a community activity. In training we learned about Participatory Analysis for Community Action (PACA) tools. These tools include group activities such as map making, seasonal and daily calendar making, and needs assessment analysis. These are also great ways to get the community to communicate and work together. 

I decided to do the map activity first. Participants made maps in groups of men, woman, and children. They could draw whatever they wanted: houses, farms, school, other surrounding cities, ect. At first, the women were particularly hesitant. “but Meti, I can’t draw. But Meti, I don’t understand." I reassured them that this was not a drawing contest but a chance to express themselves, communicate, recognize the resources that they have in the community, and have fun! Within no time there was a group of woman laughing around their map. The participants then categorized what they liked and didn’t like in the community and ranked resources from most important to least important. There were about 40 participants and they all seemed to enjoy the activity.

 

Kids making map

 

Women group

Here in Santa Marta Fathers’ Day is celebrated as a community. There was food for all, presents, speeches, and decorations. It was really beautiful to see a whole community come together to celebrate. I did become emotional because I realized how much I missed my father (love you Dad) but also realized that I have many father-like figures here in the community.

Crowned "Father of the Year"

Feasting at the celebration

 

In other fun news, the ex-vegetarian killed a chicken for the first time! It was actually a little sad and I don’t think I’d ever do it again but it was quite the experience.

Plucking the feathers

 

 

Learning anatomy in Spanish

 

It is not JUST a machete!

Innovative and creative, 20 uses of the machete I have seen here in Panama

Chopping wood (duh)

Lawn mower

Back scratcher

Tooth pick

Screw driver

Can opener

Shovel

Axe

Whittling Tool

Walking stick

Fork

orange peeler

Razor for shaving

Nail clipper

Scissors

Cracking coconuts

Chicken killing

Scorpion/snake killing 

Sculpting stairs in muddy hills

Hammer

Pana Choco Drank

How to make chocolate like a Panamanian

The next time you chow down on some chocolate cake, a snickers, or even trader joes fair trade organic 70% raw cocoa bar, I would like that my readers take a minute to think about chocolate consumption and the work necessary to produce it. I want to give insight from the chocolate producers’ perspective. Don’t worry, I’m not writing this is make you feel guilty and in hopes that you’ll never eat chocolate again. In fact, I learned and wrote the recipe for something I call ‘Pana-Choco drank’.  For all you chocolate lovers out there, you can try this easy-to-follow recipe and consume chocolate like a Panamanian cocoa farmer!

1.       First, you wake up around 6. If there’s food, you eat breakfast, and head out for the farm around 7 am. Hike up muddy hills and cross rivers with rubber boots. Depending on which farm you decide to visit, you continue walking for 30 minutes or 2 hours.

2.       When you reach your cocoa trees, you look for the fresh fruit ready to be picked. You find what looks to be gems, harvest them with your bad-ass machete, and cut open the fruit. If you find caterpillars, you may be discouraged, but keep looking because selling your cocoa will be the only income you receive for the next few months. Thankfully you are an organic producer so you will receive more pay per pound. Look for other fruits that have healthy seeds. 

Healthy cocoa tree with seed pods

3.       After 5 hours in the farm, no lunch, and 30 pounds of cocoa seeds on your back, bring the seeds home. 

4.       Ready to make some chocolate? Well too bad you still have to wait a week, maybe more, for them to dry. First put the seeds in a large wooden box. This is to ‘ferment’ the seeds and start the drying process. Keep the seeds in this box for ~3-4 days until the milky cream around the seeds (part of the fruit) has dried. It is important to not open the box during this time as it will release the heat needed to dry the seeds.

The white one still has the milky cream

1.            Next, the most crucial step, drying the seeds. If you have a ‘secador’ (a little house with plastic over it to trap heat) lay your seeds out in this secador. If you do not have one, lay your seeds out in the sun to dry. If it is raining, wait until the sun comes out. This could be anywhere from 2 hours to 6 days depending on the season.

Drying in the sun 

Secador 

Seeds in the Secador

5.       To check if the seeds are dry, simply crack open the shell and observe the cocoa nib inside. 

6.       Once your seeds are dry, it’s time to make some chocolate drank! But first you are going to sell the majority of your seeds to the local chocolate cooperative because you and your family are very hungry and need money to buy rice. If it is the ‘off season’ (December-August), you must take your seeds to the office of the cooperative, about 20 minutes by bus, that is if you have money for the bus. If it is ‘season’ you can save that bus money because the cooperative is willing to come to your community and buy your cocoa.

7.       If steps 4 and step 5 were done well, you will earn a whopping 70 cents/pound for your organic seeds. If your seeds are not completely dry, or if traces of chemicals from your conventional-farming neighbor are found on your seeds, you will be lucky to get 40 cents/pound. Why are conventional seeds paid so much less? You can thank Africa and other Central American countries for flooding the market.

8.       NOW it’s time to make some chocolate drank. Put some dry seeds in a bowl and crush them with a large stick. This cracks off the shell and exposes the cocoa nibs inside. After some crushing, shake the bowl in a matter that is impossible to describe. Hopefully this video helps. This magically makes all the shell pieces disappear from your bowl so you only have cocoa. 

Crushing the seeds

9.       Next, put your cocoa in a ‘maquina de moler’. If you are not lucky enough to have had $25 to buy one, borrow someone’s but expect to give them chocolate for your loan.  Grind the cocoa through the maquina until your cocoa is in an almost liquid-paste form and your shoulders are about to fall off. 

10.   Almost done! Form balls from the paste. After a few hours, the balls will harden and are easy to store. When ready, put a ball in boiling hot water, watch it melt, add milk and sugar, and FINALLY enjoy your ‘Pana-Choco drank’. 

I hope this easy, 10 step recipe finds its way to friends and family in the states. Please share your success stories ;)

New address!

First I want to thank the wonderful friends who sent me letters and mail while I was in training! you have no idea how much it brightened my day to receive mail.

Now that I am in site I have a new address! You can find it in the 'contact info' page of this blog.

Some potential awesome goodies:

Cliff bars
Duck tape
Kids books in Spanish, small ones!
Deck of uno cards

Any other snacks and goodies would be great! Let alone just words of love! Also if you send something please tell me so I know to look for it when I am in the city

Look for the Bear Necessities

My first 3 weeks in site have been a roller coaster. Peace Corps mandates that you take the first 3 months to integrate, better your Spanish, and build relationships. The point is to get the community to trust you so when it comes time to work they will actually want to work with you. The first week was very mundane and repetitive. I went house to house, explaining what Peace Corps is, what types of projects my sector works in, and why I am not starting projects right away. I also had to explain many times that I am not here to teach English, nor do missionary work, nor give money.  It was a slow start, but as I have spent more time visiting I have had great conversations and am starting to feel like a human again and not a song on repeat. 

The ups, highlights, and laughs

The day of the election I learned how to peel plantains. Well, I didn’t learn but tried it. Imagine peeling an unripe banana with a knife. They all laughed as I destroyed plantains while the women next to me peeled them perfectly

Three of the teachers live in the community during the week and go home on the weekend. But since they live in the community I have spent quality time with them and think I will be able to work with them in environmental education.

After school I have taken kids out to “hacer ejercicio” –do exercise. We run, do push ups, jumping jacks, and sit ups. When they are tired of that we play soccer or volleyball.

I play cards with my neighbors almost every night. We have a joke going that if I lose I need to call Obama to bring a golden trophy for them. If they lose, they need to call their newly elected president to bring me a flush toilet and clean water.

My little host brothers always play the “Bear necessities” song from the jungle book, but in Spanish. I love seeing them dance to it

Made a hot chocolate drink from raw, unprocessed chocolate. Soon to come is learning how to make chocolate from the cocoa seeds themselves!

Had a group of children teach me how to wash my clothes in the river

Ate rabbit for the first time, I have never seen a rabbit here but I’m told they are the size of dogs and weigh 20 pounds

I have learned words and phrases of Ngobe, their local language.

Made coconut bread from scratch and cooked over a fire, not from the leisure of an oven. The two women, Bexaida and Lily, and I made the bread with are part of my host family. They both have 2 children and both of their husbands work in Panama City to provide for the family. Both are 21 and can cook just about anything.



Bexaida, my host sister



Lily with her daughter, grinding coconut

Got invited to work on the farm. Treacherous 2 hour hike up a mountain but gorgeous view of the Atlantic coast and got to work on my machete skills.

 

View from the farm

 

 

 I also work out in our garden with my host brother. “Cleaning the yard” means chopping tall grass with a machete. I was trying to chop off old leaves from a plantain tree and without realizing that the trunk is very soft, I accidently chopped down the whole tree!

Tree I accidently cut!

Below are pictures of my beautiful community!

 



Road to my community



kitchen for the school



School with a soccer field in front



Some of my favorite men



Cecilia and her granddaughter. She is an amazing medicine woman that doesn't speak much Spanish but I will contently listen to her Ngobe for hours 



Katerina reading the Three Little Pigs

 



My little brother helping me clean the yard

 

Some of my best friends, yes they are 8 years old

The downs, challenges and struggles

Screaming children, everywhere I go. Anytime.

Missing cheese, milk, yogurt, and cold beverages.

As I mentioned, the monotony of explaining Peace Corps. But now that more people are aware of the program, they are eager to start projects and are constantly asking me when I am going to hold meetings

Spanish. No doubt its improving, but still struggle with vocabulary, fast speakers, and telling stories using certain grammatical tenses.

I feel tired all the time due to my diet. Boiled bananas, rice, bananas, plantains, fried bread, bananas, bananas, if I’m lucky chicken and lentils, bananas.

While most speak Spanish, I feel isolated at times when they are all speaking in Ngobe. Or approach me while speaking Ngobe when they know I don’t understand but they think it’s funny.

Expectations are high. Problems and potential projects I have heard community members include:

Aqueducts and latrines. The aqueduct does not function properly and dries up often. There have been stretches of 5 days without water in the faucets. Not to mention not every house has a faucet and those families need to carry water from faucets to their house. I have only seen about 10 latrines in Santa Marta when I know there are about 50 houses. Talking about this problem has been challenging in many ways. First off, I have zero experience in this area. Second, it’s been disheartening telling them I have experience in this area and that my group does not work in these types of projects. Fortunately, I have a meeting next week to meet all the other volunteers in Bocas del Torro. I plan to ask other Environmental Health volunteers for support. I am afraid that if the issue of water is not address than it will be difficult to motivate the community about conservation and the environment when they struggle with a necessity of life. I also want to motivate the community to form a water committee. Right now there is nothing but 4 men who volunteer to fix the tubes when they are broken. A committee could keep track of the aqueduct, charge the community for water so when pipes break there is a sum of money for maintenance, and could contact national agencies if there is a bigger problem with the aqueduct.

Reforestation. Wood is used for everything: houses, fire stoves, to make boxes for drying cocoa seeds. Many realize that the aqueduct is drying because there are less trees to protect the water shed. This is a project I can do!

Trash management. While I have seen way trashier of places (like my training community or places in the states) there is still an interest in trash clean up. Where I lived in Santa Clara, people burn their trash outside. But in Santa Marta it’s too wet so people burn trash inside their house. Luckily there is not a lot due to the limited stores and products here, but I have still walked into houses with the fresh smell of burning plastic. Burning trash also uses wood and doesn’t help the reforestation issue.

Education. MEDUCA (ministry of education) and ANAM (Panamanian equivalent to the EPA) have an agreement that mandates environmental education be in the curriculum. ANAM and MEDUCA have written guides for teachers, but the teachers complain that the guides are too vague, too advanced, and that they have no time to incorporate it. But there are other problems related to this such as many teachers are only in a school for a year (refer back to my “Stay in School” post), class is only for half the day 8-12,  and much time is wasted on poor classroom management techniques. Many CEC volunteers help the teachers with the environmental guides and lesson plans.

Ecological stoves. This is a type of stove that still used firewood but it made from a clay like material and the flame is enclosed as opposed to having an open flame which uses more wood and creates more smoke. There is interest in having one at the school and one at the communal house that is used for events.

Efficient farming and economics. Many people in my community sell cocoa seeds to a cooperative called Cocoabo. I have not been able to research much about the cooperative but if any readers find anything interesting please let me know, since I only get internet an out once a month! People in my community receive about 40-70 cents for a pound of organic seeds. Conventional seeds are paid less. This is obviously not very much and explains why my community is very poor. While I cannot change the consumer-producer trickle down effect, capitalism, or exploitation, I can help in other ways. There are more efficient harvesting and drying methods that could increase the farmers yield. My boss said that every year there is a chocolate training that I can attend to learn these techniques.

Botanical house. Still a little fuzzy on this issue. ANAM built a house that is supposed to be for botanical medicine and health center. It was built about 5 years ago but is still not open. I went to a community meeting to try and investigate. However half of the meeting was in Ngobe or very fast Spanish so I did not get very many details. I plan on talking with a community member soon to get another explanation.

 

Artesian group. Have no money to buy materials and complain that they do not have the time or money to go into more touristy areas to sell their products.

 

There are many possible projects to consider and it seems like my time here will be very busy. But the community is going to need to prioritize what they want. When my boss comes in August we will have a community meeting, where the community will decide which project they would like to work on. But until then I will be observing, learning, adapting, and sweating J